‘A Logo for America’

For two weeks in 1987, visitors to Times Square encountered an unexpected message in the iconic electronic advertising billboard that overlooked a US Army recruiting station: “This is not America.” In a forty-two-second sequence, the Chilean artist Alfredo Jaar’s provocation began with that sentence appearing first across an outline map of the US and then across the image of the US flag, followed by the word “America” written across a map of the entire continent—North, Central, and South America. Originally commissioned by the Public Art Fund as part of the Messages to the Public program, Jaar’s work returns to Times Square in connection with “Under the Same Sun,” the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s current exhibition of contemporary Latin American art. It will be projected for three minutes immediately before midnight every day in August as part of the Midnight Moment series of electronic art. Much has changed in Times Square in the last three decades, but, with the relationship between the United States and Latin America as complex as ever, the confrontation remains timely.